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If you are looking for yet to be bought land, find something with enough space to build the house you want and the shop/garage that you want as separate structures. Trying to do them as one structure means a lot of compromises on both. Some of the best money you can spend on a project like...

All the major minisplit manufacturers also offer ducted minisplits that install just like conventional central HVAC. They are slightly less efficient than ductless units, but still typically better than the barrel shaped units from Lennox and the like. They are very popular around here for...

The most energy efficient way is unquestionably a high efficiency heat pump. Depending on your energy prices it may or may not be the cheapest.

You would want a 3PDT Mom-off-Mom switch: https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/toggle-switches/201 Looks like someone beat me to it....

I would be cautious of trying to charge the mower batteries from solar directly. Power tool batteries are not the relatively safe LiFePO4 lithium chemistry that most solar systems are configured for - but are lithium cobalt cells which are the catch fire if poorly handled type. The battery...

What if you have a timer that you just set for the time it takes to charge you mower battery? You have an LiFePO4 battery that is always charged off your solar system that has ~2x the capacity of your mower battery. When you are done mowing, you put your battery on the charger, plugged into...

I have still not made any progress on this. Just getting through the inspections on the grid power for the detached garage now, and I didn't want to complicate these with solar/batteries. That will be the next phase, likely this summer.

Real windows definitely have better optical and possibly better thermal properties. One down side is that for a long series of windows like that in a load bearing wall, the framing and shear loads may get complicated. That was part of the reason I went with polycarbonate - to have a...

Thanks! Sketchup has some really easy tools to figure out the solar exposure and shadows at any date/time you want. I used it a bunch to figure out what the garage would cast shade on - I wanted to make sure it wasn't going to shade the sunny patio on the house in the winter.

Apologies, I am not in anyway doubting your experience and practicality. I am speaking about theorizing that the lineman (and code inspectors) really shouldn't be so concerned about back feeding the grid as it is a low risk that they would be injured/killed. Neither of us are lineman or grid...

Multiwall polycarbonate (as used in green houses) is a great option. The U values for the 3 or 5 wall stuff are pretty close to nromal double pane windows. Edit to add - I am not sure I would want to do this on south facing walls, that would be a huge heat load in the summer unless the eaves...

Not to be rude, and speaking as a fellow PhD physicist, you are kind of proving the point about physicist syndrome....

This is kind of the issue with a little bit of knowledge being dangerous. That 120/240V from your generator or solar backfeeds the transformer on the pole/pedestal outside your house, where instead of being stepped down like in normal operation, it is now stepped up to the transmission line...

I also think I am also in a demographic that is apt to make this sort of mistake - I have degrees in EE and physics and have a tendency to suffer from what we call 'physicist syndrome', which is the idea that you can figure anything out from first principles, and don't really need practical...

Some lineman do live line work in controlled situations - but a repair crew (or neighbor) trying to get that branch off the line or get around the downed line is not one of those situations. A portable generator produces more than enough 'power' to kill someone. Anti-islanding is a really...

Yes, drop the humidistat so that it runs more often and hopefully lower the humidity enough to prevent condensation, it looks like you could even try turning it to continuously on. If that doesn't solve the issue, it seems like a dehumidifier is your next best option, followed by doing...

I plan on doing the commissioning - it doesn't seem particularly complicated.

On closer reading there is a 'freeze guard' or 'energy save' mode that sets the heat to 8C/46F, which would be perfect for my application. I am still a few months away from ordering (need insulation and final electrical inspection first), but I think this is the one.

One thing I am reading about these is that you can't set the thermostat below 61F, do you know if that is accurate? It could be a deal breaker.

To get back to the original point - it seems that the Gree Saphire (aka Blue Ridge Ultra Heat) is the leading contender by a large margin. I don't know how reliable their self reported performance specs are, but they do seem to be better than the self reported performance specs from other...